


sift me clear of all i do

by friendly_ficus



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magical Technobabble, Post-Finale, Recovery, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, but we are gonna GET some healthy coping mechanisms. someday., for a given value of canon compliant, this one's a little rough folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23639215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: Adaine’s in the kitchen,Aelwen tells herself, staring at the glow-stars stuck to the bottom of the top bunk.She’s just in the kitchen or the bathroom or something, she’s fine. She’s fine.After twenty seconds of repeating frankly useless platitudes, she reaches for her robe and rolls out of bed, stepping into her slippers on her way out the door.(Sometimes it’s not about light creeping over the horizon; it’s that there’s a horizon at all.)
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Aelwen Abernant
Comments: 18
Kudos: 203





	sift me clear of all i do

The first time Adaine gets hurt after everything, really hurt, Aelwen doesn’t trance for three nights.

She goes over and over it in her head, rewatches the crystal stream of the fight, sees her sister fall at the edge of the frame. She remembers the weight of her sister’s body in her arms, how heavy she’d been, how the unicorn had left a hole straight through her. This isn’t that. This wasn’t that. This was a lich showing up at the summer fundraiser for the Aguefort marching band, which, first of all what the fuck. What the fuck. 

Bards are usually incompetent, in Aelwen’s opinion. That opinion has soured further with the way the clarinet section had not even served as a useful distraction between  _ her sister  _ and a  _ lich.  _ What the  _ fuck. _ And why were the Bad Kids even  _ there?  _

The first night, she thinks she’s going to just piece together a runthrough of the fight, maybe come up with something to teach Adaine that could keep her  _ out  _ of these situations. She works through three levels of abjuration theory before the sun comes up and Adaine stirs on the top bunk, looks over the edge to see her hunched at the desk, surrounded by floating notebooks. At some point in the night her good pen ran out of ink, so she’s using the orange gel pen from the set Jawbone gave her on her one-month-Solisian-citizenship-congrats-you’re-a-resident anniversary.

“Are you alright?” Adaine yawns. Popping up beside her to look over the railing, Boggy the Froggy gives a cheerful  _ ribbit! _

Ugh, he’s such a morning person. Frog. Whatever. Adaine’s looking at her. Why is Adaine looking at her again? If you use the principles of Andeainwyn’s Six Theory and a framework from Helandaran Logic, theoretically you should be able to redirect necrotic damage for up to three minutes—

“Aelwen, are you alright?” she asks, a little bit urgent. Oh, right.

“Yes, I’m fine. What are you up to today?” 

The notebooks float over to the desk and stack neatly as Aelwen stands, grimacing when her knee pops. Adaine begins going over her plans for the day, something about going to the mall with Fabian and helping Riz out at the detective agency. Summer is good for her sister, Aelwen’s found. Anything that doesn’t involve wandering through a nightmare forest is good for Adaine, as far as Aelwen’s concerned.

\---

The second night, Aelwen spreads her notebooks out on the kitchen table after dinner and doesn’t get up for seven hours. It’s not that she doesn’t notice time passing, it’s just that it doesn’t seem that important. At around three in the morning, she wanders over to the coffee machine and puts a pot on, scribbling with her other hand on a filter. She’d taken a wrong turn somewhere in her reasoning; Helandaran Logic is remarkably conducive to spellcraft, but Mix’rean Abjurative Principles come into direct conflict with Andeainwyn’s more recent work, and Aelwen learned the Mix’rean principles first at Mumple, so something’s gotten tangled—

She hears a heavy footstep in the hallway outside the kitchen and her notes clatter down from wherever they were floating as she turns, a spell building in her throat. 

“Aelwen, that you?” Jawbone calls softly, coming into her view. 

There’s a moment where she just looks at him, because that can’t be  _ it.  _ Maybe behind him, or next to him or behind her but  _ there should be something else,  _ there’s always. There’s always. 

Jawbone waits and what a sight she must make, hair messy from running her hand through it and standing in front of the kitchen sink at three in the morning, everyone else long gone to sleep.

“You got enough coffee for two, kiddo?” he asks, not moving from the entryway. 

Aelwen realizes that she’s breathing fairly fast. He startled her. He only startled her, that’s all. There’s no one else there.

“Y-yes,” she says at last, moving back to the machine, nodding at him to get a mug. She hates the way she stutters it like she hates how fast her heart is still beating like she hates how she could be surprised by Jawbone after living here for three months. He’s a good person, she knows he’s a good person.

He gets his favorite mug from the cabinet, the one with the three wolves around the moon. The moon turns full when something hot is in the mug. It’s stupid that she likes that, she thinks, but he gets her mug too, the one that turns from blue to green. 

“It’s early for coffee,” she says, because she needs something to say.

“I’ve had it at stranger times,” Jawbone tells her. “I’ve got a story or two about it, if you can take a break from whatever you’re doing with the notes, there.”

“I’m using the pens,” she offers like an apology. 

(Jawbone’s big on her not saying sorry when she hasn’t actually done anything. For the first month she’d said sorry constantly, trying to make up for a lifetime of not saying it to Adaine or to make up for the fact that she was taking up space in their home. He’d started refusing her apologies, turning them away with a  _ no worries  _ or a  _ no reason to be sorry for that, Aelwen.) _

“Nice! They work okay?” he asks, ambling over to the fridge and getting a jug out. Jawbone takes his coffee with just sugar, Aelwen knows, but he knows she likes hers with the hazelnut creamer. 

“I like them,” she says, caught for a moment in how surreal this scene is. Jawbone seems unphased as she gathers her notes together, coffee filter and all.

He spends three hours telling her about his time as a patron of a baronese coffee house that had also been a front for the vampire crime family he’d been working for. By four-thirty Aelwen’s smiling despite herself. 

\---

The third night, Aelwen goes through her entire evening ritual and lays down in the bottom bunk early, going for more hours to make up for the last couple days. Then Adaine doesn’t come to their room. Then she starts to worry.

_ Adaine’s in the kitchen,  _ she tells herself, staring at the glow in the dark stars stuck to the bottom of the top bunk.  _ She’s just in the kitchen or the bathroom or something, she’s fine. She’s fine.  _

After twenty seconds of repeating frankly useless platitudes, she reaches for her robe and rolls out of bed, stepping into her slippers on her way out the door. She walks the grounds of Mordred Manor for an hour, even after remembering that Adaine’s staying with the Gukgaks for the evening. She briefly considers going over to the Strongtower Luxury Apartments before dismissing the idea. Sklonda Gukgak’s not a fan of hers, which, understandable, and Riz isn’t exactly her friend either. Adaine is safe. Adaine is probably safe. If Adaine wasn’t safe, she’d know it.

“I’d just know, okay?” she hisses to the empty air, before remembering that the thing she’d usually be arguing with is dead. 

She finds herself at the kitchen table again in the morning, feet sore from pacing the yard, the floors, the stairs up to Adaine’s tower. 

Sandralynn sits down across from her with two mugs and slides one across the smooth table. Aelwen catches it without thinking and sees the marshmallows bobbing in the cocoa.  _ It’s too hot for this,  _ she thinks idly,  _ it’s out of season. _

Sandralynn is watching her and the house is quiet all around them. Everyone’s out somewhere else, even Zayn is off visiting his grave. 

“You can’t do this, kid,” she says, looking all concerned. “Your sister’s worried—no, it’s not about her.”

_ How dare you,  _ Aelwen thinks, clenching her jaw.  _ Everything’s about Adaine, everything’s about keeping her safe, I have to protect her. _

Sandralynn is still talking. “I know you think it should be, but sometimes it’s not about other people at all. Why aren’t you resting, Aelwen? It’s been at least two days since you tranced.”

Aelwen looks away, a little mutinous, but takes a sip from the mug and feels the familiar pressure of exhaustion building behind her eyes. She’s so fucking tired. She’s so fucking sick of being tired. 

“Aelwen,” Sandralynn says after a while, but she doesn’t continue.

“What.”

“Come flying with Baxter and me.”

A thousand feet above Elmville, Sandralynn’s presence strong and sure a foot behind her and Baxter navigating confidently, the both of them making sure she won’t fall, Aelwen realizes her hands are shaking.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she confesses, and she’s sick of herself, sick of the fact that she can only do this when she’s not meeting anyone’s gaze. “I don’t know how to be a good sister but I know—you’re supposed to protect your sister. I’m supposed to keep her safe. I fucked it up for  _ years,”  _ Aelwen blinks, digs one thumb into the meat of the other hand so hard that the skin is paper-white, “for  _ years.  _ And I still can’t get it right and I can’t fucking trance because I can’t  _ stop— _ ”

Sandralynn shifts a little behind her, reaches forward and untangles her hands, sets one of them in the soft feathers of Baxter’s neck. She withdraws then, but not all the way; she lays one hand on Aelwen’s shoulder, not squeezing, just resting a warm weight there.

“Listen,” she says, like Aelwen could manage to interrupt right now. “We’re not the same, but I’ve fucked up a lot in my life. There’s a trick to it, if you’re curious.”

Silent, petting Baxter’s neck and staring ahead at the clouds, Aelwen nods.

“You  _ keep going.  _ You can’t fix it all, and no one expects you to manage it on your own, but you keep going. You’re so young, kid. You’re all so goddamn young, there’s time. You can take the time to rest.”

When they get back to the manor, Aelwen collapses onto the couch and doesn’t come out of it until the next morning. Someone puts a pillow under her head.

\---

A week later, Aelwen finds herself in the kitchen with Saint Kristen Applebees. She’s chopping vegetables for some soup while Kristen writes a letter for Tracker. The radio is playing something slow; Gilear left it on an easy listening station last time he was here and broke the dial, and Gorgug Thistlespring hasn’t been around to fix it yet.

"When Adaine, when she gets hurt," Aelwen starts, turning to watch Kristen sway a little on her stool in time with the music. 

The cleric's eyes get focused, though she stays relaxed. That's big in Mordred Manor, trying to stay relaxed. It comes more naturally to some of them. 

"I help her," Kristen promises, "I'll always help her."

_ Don't make that promise,  _ the bitter part of Aelwen hisses.  _ You can't keep each other safe, not in a world like this— _

She stops, tries to rethink the thoughts with a little distance. Maybe they can't always be safe, but Kristen is an accomplished healer and Figueroth can heal as well. Maybe she can't make that promise, but Aelwen's aware of some of the lengths Kristen will go to in pursuit of her goals; it's not just anyone that resurrects a deity. Maybe the world is dangerous, full of traps and things that will kill them given the chance. Maybe it's terrible and unfixable, too great for anything like balance or fairness to exert itself. Maybe Aelwen's buried so deep under her own sins that she can never dig her way out.

Waiting, Kristen watches her. 

Looking at her, looking around them at the kitchen in the house Aelwen never thought she’d live in, in the life she never thought she’d have, she can’t help but think:  _ hey, maybe that isn’t true. _

\---

When autumn comes, Adaine goes back to the Academy and Aelwen finds herself at a bit of a loss. She needs to fill the hours somehow—there are opportunities if she wants them, but she isn’t sure what to do with that. They remember her at Mumple, she knows, and if she wanted her degree she could make them give it to her; she’s the best student they’d had in a century and they were all pushovers if you couched your demands in the right language. She could start volunteering somewhere, maybe, or get a job. She could go away to study, she could go away to protect Adaine, she could  _ leave— _

It’s not that she’s not welcome here. It’s been six months, she’d know if she was unwelcome here, it’s just. It’s just. It's... difficult sometimes, to be feeling everything so strongly. It's strange to be in a place where that's possible. So much of herself had been a performance, an artifice she’d worked so hard to make work, a shield that wasn’t good for much of anything, when it came down to it. And to be honest, it scares the shit out of her.

The leaves are starting to fall and Aelwen’s remembering that this is her favorite season more and more each day, when she hasn’t let herself have something so juvenile as a  _ favorite season  _ in as long as she can remember.

The leaves are starting to fall and Kalina is gone.

Kalina is gone and that means that for the first time in ten years, when Aelwen’s alone, she’s alone. No one is looking over her shoulder, no one is following Jawbone into the kitchen, no one is standing behind Adaine when they talk, directing her words. Privacy is possible.

She tests it out sometimes, goes to the park near the old house in the middle of the night without telling anyone, sits on the swings she’d never been allowed to swing on and looks at the stars. No one unfolds from the shadows next to her to tell her secrets, no one laughs at her attempts at new spells, no one asks her what she’s doing when she spins in the seat, coiling the chains of the swing around and around until the tension is too much and she’s whirling in the opposite direction. 

The leaves are falling. A few wispy clouds curl across the sky but the stars are glittering and bright in the chilly night.

Alone, two streets away from where she’d been a child and across town from what might be turning into her home, alone and breathless and dizzy, blissfully and terribly alone, Aelwen’s crystal chimes.

**Adaine:** i woke up and you’re gone are you safe?

**Aelwen:** yes

**Adaine:** do you want company? 

Aelwen thinks about that for a while, listening to the breeze through the trees, looking for the moon in the sky. She could run away right now, if she wanted to. It’d be safer, to leave Adaine, to take herself out of the equation; Aelwen’s not an idiot, she knows that somewhere out there someone likely wants revenge for her part in the whole KVX thing, or her part in Kalina’s plans, or the whole  _ murder of the oracle.  _ She doesn’t want to bring them to Mordred Manor, where her sister lives with what might be like a family. She doesn’t want Adaine to get hurt, she doesn’t know how to keep Adaine from getting hurt, she doesn’t know how to protect her. She’s fucked it all up before, she’ll do it again. But—

“I don’t want to leave,” she says aloud, and there’s no Shadowcat perched in the trees to tell her that she has to. “I don’t want to leave.”

**Aelwen:** it’s cold, you should stay inside

**Adaine:** i have a sweater

**Aelwen:** stay in, i’ll be home soon.

**Author's Note:**

> title of this fic is from the song ‘Kindness Be Conceived’ by Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, which is a very Aelwen Post-Finale Song imo.  
> wish i had a cooler note to leave on this story, but i just have a lot of feelings about aelwen and safety. i think it would be messy, i think some of it would be awful, but if we can’t get well we can at least get better. i’m just never gonna be done with these sisters i own that  
> leave a comment and let me know what you think!


End file.
